Media Talk: Digital to revive the radio star?

Media Talk: Digital to revive the radio star?

"Smartphones being able to stream services will be a big boon to radio as an industry as younger people are more likely to want to access the radio through their smartphones and mobile devices or laptops... I listen to Radio National breakfast in the mornings. I always have the radio on in the office, it sits right near my phone. I podcast as well and download the stuff I might not have a chance to listen to during the week."
- Kate Dundas, director, ABC Radio, talking to Mediaweek Australia. 

Dundas oversees five networks (Classic FM, News Radio, Triple J, Radio National and Local Radio), who together reach 7.5 million Australians each week, and three digital stations (ABC dig, ABC Country and ABC Jazz), soon to be joined by Unearthed, Triple J's offshoot. 

There are also two pop-up digital stations to tune into: Grandstand, for sport, and ABC Extra, which deals in new and innovative event-based content programming, including the recent Murdoch hearings broadcast and Marshal McLuhan Special, which featured McKenzie Wark who was, coincidentally, one of my first-year media lecturers at a time when the internet was a mysterious thing.

Wark's book Celebrities, Culture, Cyberspace: the light on the hill in a postmodern world was required reading. For the most part, as is the case with many academic experiences for 19-year-olds, I had NO IDEA what he was talking about. Now I get it, as with McLuhan's prophetic warning of an "age of anxiety" and the loss of privacy with the rise of electronic media. Wark now works for The New School in New York.

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